Sniper Elite 4

Sniper Elite 4

Wind pushes every long shot off its line, and a passing aircraft can cover the crack of a rifle. Sniper Elite 4 is a third-person World War II shooter built around those calculations. In 1943 Italy, Karl Fairburne dismantles a Nazi weapon program one target at a time, with binoculars to tag patrols and officers before he commits to a shot.

Top 3 Reasons to Play

1. The kill cam reaches beyond rifle shots. The X-ray camera also triggers on melee takedowns and trap kills, and it shows shrapnel, broken bones and damaged organs in slow motion.
2. Levels are sandboxes with one or two primary objectives, optional targets, collectibles and hidden sniper nests. Whether a guarded position is approached along a ledge or picked apart from a distance is up to the player.
3. The whole campaign can be played online with a second player. In Overwatch co-op the roles split: one player snipes, and the spotter tags targets and completes objectives.

Story and Lore

The story is set in Italy in 1943, directly after the events of Sniper Elite III. A radio-guided anti-ship missile sinks the Royal Navy freighter Orchidea, and Allied command fears for the invasion fleet. Karl Fairburne is sent to find the people building it.

His contacts on the ground come from very different backgrounds. Sofia "Angel" Di Rocco leads the Partisans who know the countryside, OSS agent Jack Weaver passes along intelligence, and the mafia boss Salvatore Dinelli asks Karl to kill the fascist Piero Capo. Across the line stand General Tobias Schmidt, the missile scientist Andreas Kessler and the officers who protect them.

The route runs through San Celini island, the Regilino Viaduct, Lorino Dockyard and Allagra Fortress, among other locations. At the end of the trail sits General Heinz Böhm, a brutal commander whose face the Allies have never seen.

Gameplay and Mechanics

The campaign consists of eight missions. Rifle shots follow a ballistics model that accounts for wind, gravity and the sniper's heart rate, and scope zeroing lets a player set the crosshair for a known range instead of compensating by hand. Lower difficulty levels soften bullet drop, and the higher ones apply the full model.

Staying unseen depends on a handful of tools:

• A shot can be timed with overhead aircraft or other loud events, and suppressed ammunition quiets it further.
• Mines, trip mines, satchel charges, TNT and sticky grenades can be laid in advance, and a body rigged with a mine waits for the enemies who come to investigate.
• Karl climbs, hangs and shimmies along ledges, and stealth takedowns work from a hanging position.
• Binoculars tag enemies and display a short biography for each.

Weapons can be tuned for scope magnification, muzzle velocity and stability, the player assembles custom loadouts, and skill upgrades unlock new abilities. Some weapons are unlocked through actions such as melee-killing officers.

Survival mode puts up to four players against 12 waves of enemies. Competitive multiplayer holds up to 12 players across six modes and six maps listed at release, among them Distance King, where the longest killing shot wins, and No Cross, a team deathmatch played across a divided map with a no-man's-land in the middle.

Characters and Factions

• Karl Fairburne is the player's character. Unlike in earlier entries, he talks with other characters before most missions.
• Sofia "Angel" Di Rocco leads the Partisan resistance.
• Jack Weaver, an OSS agent, supplies intelligence.
• Salvatore Dinelli is a mafia boss who sets Karl a target of his own.
• General Heinz Böhm is the commander protecting Kessler's missile program.

The Italian Resistance and its Partisan cells are Karl's main partners, with the mafia as a second, self-interested ally. Opposing them are Nazi forces, Kessler's missile program and the Black Brigade, a local fascist militia led by Piero Capo.

Editions

On PC the game comes in three forms:

• Standard Edition: the base game with the campaign, co-op and multiplayer.
• Season Pass: 12 DLC packs across three expansions. The contents are four additional missions (Target Führer and the three-part Deathstorm campaign), 18 weapons, nine characters for multiplayer and co-op, and 32 rifle skins.
• Deluxe Edition: the base game bundled with the Season Pass.

Every pack is also sold separately, including the Night Fighter, Urban Assault and Cold Warfare Winter expansion packs. Additional multiplayer maps and modes were promised as free post-launch updates and are not part of the pass.